Jenny Lumet arrives with 'Rachel Getting Married'

Initially, she wanted to be an actress. And her father, director Sidney Lumet, gave her juicy role in his 1990 cop thriller "Q&A" as a drug kingpin's lover whose life becomes more complicated when her old boyfriend, now an assistant district attorney, reenters her orbit.

Her reviews were pretty good, she recalls. "It wasn't a flat-out disaster by any means, but I just couldn't get another job."

She continued to audition because "I didn't have the confidence to try anything else," admits Lumet, 41. "I thought that is what I was supposed to do. It's an excruciating profession. I don't know if I was unhappy I couldn't get a job or I couldn't get a job because I was unhappy."

But it turns out that happiness was just on the other side of the camera for Lumet, the daughter of journalist Gail Lumet Buckley and granddaughter of singer Lena Horne. For the last eight years, she's been teaching drama at her son's school in Manhattan -- a job she still has -- and writing screenplays, including the powerful and emotionally poignant dramedy "Rachel Getting Married," which opens Friday.

Directed by Jonathan Demme, the tale revolves around Kym (Anne Hathaway), a young woman who has battled substance abuse problems for years who returns to the family home for her sister Rachel's (Rosemarie DeWitt) wedding. The film paints a portrait of a complicated relationship between the sisters, one darkened by shades of jealousy, guilt and other emotional fallout from a seemingly unforgivable act.

"Writing started with my first pregnancy," Lumet explains. "And teaching started with my first pregnancy. My son -- he's 13 -- goes to a school called Manhattan Country School, which is a hippie school on 96th Street. They don't have any money, so I said, 'I'll start a drama program.' I know absolutely if it wasn't for being a teacher and being in front of 12- and 13-year-olds, there is no way I could have had any nerve to write this script, let alone any script."

To create the film's realistic and complex characters, Lumet says she pilfered from friends and family. "My dad is a notorious maker of sandwiches and a feeder of guests and a dishwasher lunatic," she says, explaining traits she ascribed to the father in "Rachel Getting Married."

"I think families are weird and insane. They are the best source material on the planet."